


Many Mansions

by Raziel



Category: 19th Century CE RPF
Genre: Gen, Lord M - Freeform, Melbourne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 02:04:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13180077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raziel/pseuds/Raziel





	Many Mansions

The most difficult part of being Queen, Victoria sometimes thinks, is the simple lack of privacy. There were always eyes upon her, and that was sometimes an insurmountable burden. Other times, if not a blessing, then the armor in which she shielded herself.

Albert, dear Albert, so determined to take up all the oxygen in a room with his ideas, his enthusiasms, his subtle insistence on being the center of attention at all times in their family space as if to compensate for his role in the world, several places behind his wife. And, as he’d known on some level since the very beginning, to _him _. Or at least the memory of _him _. Even their letters had to stop. Albert deemed it not appropriate that she should exchange such frequent correspondence with a retired politician. At least, that is how he phrased it, never acknowledging that jealousy prompted him.____

Dear Albert, so obsessed with appearances, insistent on molding the court and the country, as well as his own family, to conform with his image of a proper German household. Pious, sober and oh so very prolific in the production of children!

Her boudoir was her safe space, the only place she could sometimes find a bit of privacy at day’s end. Her dresser had been with her so long she was scarcely a separate entity to Victoria. But it was better when even that faithful servant departed. Then Victoria could spend a few precious moments alone.

At bedtime she kept only a single candle burning on her dressing table. Victoria liked to brush her own hair then, 100 strokes, as dear Lehzen had done throughout her childhood. This had always been their special time. Lehzen, surrogate mother, loyal friend, asking nothing, neither titles nor wealth, only to love and serve her Queen. Albert’s jealousy had banished her too, Victoria thought bitterly. But it was not really Albert she blamed as much as her own imperfect desire to surrender as much of her will to her husband as she could, in hope that by doing so she could further obfuscate the deepest secret of her heart.

Victoria looked into the dark mirror before her. She didn’t see, didn’t want to see, the plump German hausfrau into which she’d been molded, willing clay. The waist spread, flesh loose under her dressing gown, from having borne so very many children. Even her face was no longer familiar to her. It was all a mask, a costume donned by the essentially miserable girl of twenty determined to do her duty and put the best possible disguise on heartbreak and longing.

Having her handsome cousins come at just the time she needed a distraction had, of course, seemed like a lifeline then. Trying to resign herself to knowing that what she wanted – what they both yearned for – could never be, the arrival of the two German princes had indeed been a welcome distraction. She’d thought Albert handsome in his uniform. She’d never looked at his face and saw such male beauty that her breath caught in her throat, as had happened with _him _. But he was well-enough looking, and in the end it all seemed so inevitable, so easy to go along with what they all wanted as if floating on a current carrying her to some familiar if unseen destination.__

This, here, was the destination then. An approved marriage, intimacy, pregnancy, childbirth, daily life in an ever-increasing family. She’d lifted her chin, smiled and never let them see how hard it was to bear. Her subjects, her court, her family, the children who clamored for something she couldn’t entirely give. Dear Albert. They’d forged a life together, created this family and of course she loved, honored and obeyed him. She regarded him with the same bemused affection as she did this frumpy, overweight creature looking back from her mirror.

Victoria’s real secret was one which if allowed to take hold, if indulged for longer than a few precious moments at a time, could grow and consume enough of her conscious mind to someday threaten the very throne. Victoria had been raised on her mother’s fearsome stories of the madness that ran through her father’s family, knew how erratic her Uncle King had become in old age and even worse, how her grandfather had been actually mad, Mad King George. Every childish outburst of Victoria’s, every tear-filled rant during her teen years, had been remarked upon by the loathsome Conroy as a harbinger of instability.

For years, Victoria had struggled to bury a deep, unexpressed longing for something she couldn’t name, nostalgia for nothing she remembered, a frequent sense of almost vertiginous disorientation that would rise up as she sat in her drawing room, watched her children at play, attended a concert. A sense that something was very wrong, that she was lost in an unfamiliar place, a need to cry out that sometimes made her bite her lip until it bled. The only way she could combat these feelings was to keep herself so busy there wasn’t a single moment left unfilled, to lavish affection on her husband and sporadically on the children, to take microscopic interest in the matters of government. And yet…she couldn’t completely subdue this madness, if such it was.

Spiritualism as a topic of conversation in polite society had taken hold some years ago, and it piqued Victoria’s interest. Something in the notion of mediums and messages from the spirit world, the other side, resonated. Victoria counted herself fortunate in this instance that Albert eagerly embraced novel ideas, and had a boundless curiosity about the world. They had hosted a famous psychic medium, Miss Georgiana Eagle, at Osborne several times.

Séances attempted to reach the spirits of those who had “crossed over.” As Miss Eagle explained it, she would direct the combined energy of those present to call forth those from whom they wished to hear. Albert put forth his own mother’s name. Victoria joined in the ritual around the table, her stomach twisted almost painfully from anticipation. If this worked, if she could feel _him _for just a moment…if in this place, around this table, she could open her heart once more and silently pour out everything that had gone unsaid…__

__Victoria was never certain exactly what happened. She certainly didn’t see that loved visage, and the medium didn’t relay any messages of special, secret significance, although Albert gratefully accepted the words of love and pride that ostensibly came from his mother in the Great Beyond. Victoria considered the words no more than any mother might say to a grown child, certainly not proof positive that they didn’t originate in the medium’s avarice. Yet she was content to pretend a certainty she didn’t feel because she wanted, needed, to encourage Albert’s continued interest in this new pastime._ _

__Whether the quiet, the hum, the collective “energy” truly opened a door to some other place, or if Victoria simply allowed her conscious self – the self with the indomitable will, whose laser focus was on duty and the myriad tasks each day presented – to relinquish control, she was lulled into some ether space. When she returned to herself it was with a new, imperfect understanding of the thing that haunted her._ _

___What Victoria had seen, shapeless and undefined, impossible to describe, was that the world, reality itself, was multidimensional, intersecting paths leading to different places. Like a…palace, she thought, because the actual concept she glimpsed had no images, a mansion with many rooms, many corridors all leading off a grand central space._ _ _

__What she returned knowing, as though God Himself had whispered in her ear, was that this life she was living was but one room in a great palace, far greater than Buckingham, more splendidly complex than even Versailles. What she returned knowing, with certainty, was that at one fateful moment she had faltered and chosen the wrong path, entered the wrong room, was living the wrong life._ _

__That same all-knowing, all-compassionate Voice also whispered that there would be other chances, that this life was not all there was, that it was permissible to return again and again to chose another path, another room. That she would meet all the souls whose paths were meant to intersect with hers, to teach her, to guide her. That this life wasn’t the end of her soul’s journey and it's purpose was to learn and grow, to let her soul become what it was meant to be, absent the constraints of conventional religiosity, the heavy harness of negative emotion. That the yearning for _him _which lived in her, never extinguished, always a small glittering precious object held deep in her heart, was neither sinful nor self-indulgent. That there were other rooms, other worlds where she had persevered in following her heart, where, even now, _they _were together. And still other rooms in a future unseen where they would have another chance to be together. In the quiet times, at night as she prepared to sleep, looking at the matron in the mirror, she allowed her mind just a glimpse into those other rooms where_ he _waited for her to find him.______

____Over time and many other visits with spiritualists, some genuinely gifted and others greedy and ridiculous, Victoria gained more understanding. She never put into words what she sought, could never. If they were truly sent as guides, the mediums would recognize her need. It was enough to know it wasn’t madness._ _ _ _


End file.
